Lost and Found
by abstraction
Summary: They've both seen the mark of her in different rooms, proof that the memory of her, like a ghost, still remains; but now they see how her things affect him. Martha, Donna, TenRose.


**Lost and Found (Small Deaths Remix)**  
abstraction

(Written for chips_remixed on LJ. Original fic by hippiebanana132.)

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Dust hangs lightly in the air, slowly waltzing in an eerie blue light, and her fingers on the door handle slip downwards, curling softly at her sides. She wasn't sure what she had expected to find. The silence of the room is not friendly, but neither is it uncomfortable; it almost seems sad, and she wonders, a little, how she got to the point where even the absence of something could be touched with tragedy. It wasn't that she was looking for it, mind— but she kept finding little pieces of it. The weariness, the sadness— she could feel the way it drifted in his wake, hear it weighing down his steps. She wonders if she's not a little mad these days, if his sight will ever turn to her from the vast distance of time. She wonders what it is that she's doing here, what it will accomplish.

Her hands turn into fists without her say, her fingers curling inwards like leaves, and she can feel the half-moons of her fingernails digging into her palms, the impressions leaving a running stitch across her hands which bisect her lifelines. Her heart line. She gathers up all her courage and reasoning, and prepares to feel the angry despair that often arises whenever he mentions— well, _her_. Rose. The mysterious, clever, perfect creature that had crawled inside both his hearts, had captured them so completely that he was hers even when he did not know who he was, and she was just a voice in a dream. She was the ghost that haunted his eyes, and the pauses before he sighed and looked past her. She was the pair of dancing shoes that he had ordered her to put back, the continuous comparison that lurked in his words when she did something wrong. Her nails dig the crescents deeper.

When she finally takes a step forward, lights fade in from nowhere— a pale yellow which swells up and causes shadows to move swiftly across the walls and the floor in strange patterns. Her chest constricts and she doesn't expect the feeling that rises within her, a bewildering mix of disappointment and relief.

It was just— well, it was just so _normal._

It was as if the girl who lived here had left at a moment's notice; casually abandoning a book by laying it upside-down on the bedside table; a brush holding light strands of hair between its bristles and shining in the room's glow. The was a wide impression in the duvet on the bed, like someone had been lying there hours before. From where she's standing, she can't see any photos. She walks to the dresser opposite her, and her fingers are pulling the handle before she can think of all the reasons why this is not a good idea. The top drawer slides open easily. Inside, amongst pens and markers and colorful pieces of string, is an unmarked notebook. Its spiral edge of wire is imperfect, and pages stick out in alternating lengths. She reaches for it, but hesitates.

She knows that he is practically on the other end of his sprawling, infinite ship, but she still casts a glance over her shoulder, almost expecting him to be leaning against the frame of the door instead. It's just that he _knows_ things, and its not like she hasn't noticed that he has impeccably terrible timing. But he isn't there, and she releases a breath she didn't know she was holding. Her hands grasp the notebook as lightly as possible, trying not to jar anything else in the drawer, wanting her presence there to be silent, intangible, unnoticed. She pushes down the thought that maybe her presence has always been that.

(Once, she remarked to him about the endless rooms of this place, and how wonderful it was. She told him it was like Hogwarts— a room for everything —and she had jokingly asked if he had moving staircases too, or if the rooms ever decided to wander from one place to another. He only winked.)

There is a chair against the wall, facing the bed, and the polished wood arms are oddly inviting, so she walks carefully around a haphazard pile of books, and a magazine in an alien language. There is also a left shoe, a small cylinder of chapstick. She sits, staring at the book in her lap, with her fingers tracing the wire spiral binding, feeling the the nicks and bends. But after a moment she simply opens it.

The first page in the notebook isn't attached to anything, as if it was an afterthought to add to the collection, and immediately she can feel that familiar anger and despair twisting up and around her heart like thorns. She should have known.

It was a drawing of Rose. At least, she's almost sure it's her. It wasn't the vague ink portrait of a dream girl, either; not this time. She looked solid, lines curving to form her shape, dark smudges wisping outwards to denote eyelashes, the curve of her mouth, the shadow in the hollow of her neck. She was curled in sleep, sheets wound around her legs, folding beneath her fingers, and strands of her hair fell leisurely across her features. It was the sort of drawing, Martha knew, that was as intimate and clandestine as it was cherished. She can feel a jealousy beginning to burn through her, and she tries to stop the current of it from coursing too strongly in her veins. It's petty and she's _above_ that sort of thing. Isn't she?

Her name is overpowering in the silence, and her head whips toward the sound of it. He is standing, rigid, in the doorway, his hands balled in his pockets and his face shadowed. She opens her mouth, prepared to speak, but says nothing. She has been caught, and she feels an abrupt sort of anger, a pre-emptive defense, and already, she thinks furiously, he's getting upset because she's explored a _room_? It could be _anybody's_ room, she could have stumbled in here on accident (which was almost the truth) and what's it to him, anyway? People walk around ruins all the time, traipsing through the old lives of dead kings and queens, why shouldn't she be allowed to do the same?

"Martha," he says, frigid. "I would like you to leave now."

She is trying to read him by stance alone, wondering if she can push this, if she has any right to anger him by defending herself. Lately she has taken to regarding him as if he were a silent film instead of just a person, but even this is not right since he can't even be that. Nevertheless, she has been watching him as he chatters on about something and flicks things on the console, watching while his arms gesture dramatically, or when his hands rake through his hair, storing all the silent observations. His actions define him, but there's never any pause, no black screen that tells her what he really means to say, so she tries to make it up— draw her own conclusions. But now, him in the door and her guilty and angered by it, she only nods to him. She stands, carefully closing the notebook, and hands it to him as she brushes past him into the hallway. Her footsteps thud almost too loudly as she walks away, back to her own room, trying to distance herself from what she's done.

But then she stops, and turns on her heel, and clears her throat.

He still hasn't moved.

"Doctor, I—" she begins. Her lungs don't want to cooperate, exactly, but she's tired of feeling like she has tiptoe around this invisible woman, has to carry the weight of her without even knowing who she really was. She sets her shoulders, straightens her spine, and stares intently at his shoulderblades, almost willing him to turn and face her. "Doctor, I only saw the name on the door— I mean, I don't know anything about her really, and… and she's…" He hasn't turned; it doesn't even look like he's breathed since she handed the book to him, but she finishes her sentence anyway, deflated. "She was very pretty."

There's silence now, again, and oh, she's bollocksed this up, hasn't she? She should have just gone to her room like she was going to before, she should never have opened that bloody woman's door, never have listened to her own ridiculous curiosity. Her heart feels like it has turned to stone, dropping impossibly with a sudden weight. She is about to turn and disappear— pack her things, maybe, (what if he just dropped her off somewhere? What would she do?)— but she sees him shift his weight from one foot to the other. She knows what this means, and she waits.

"Is," he says after a moment, but it sounds like he choked on the word. There's a heavy pause.

"Pardon?"

"Not was," he clarifies. "She still is, I reckon. Beautiful, I mean."

He closes the door carefully, turning the handle slowly and pulling it back, then letting it roll upwards again with his fingers. She feels alternately embarrassed and angry and accepting. She's so confused about what this might mean, but calms herself with reason; just because she's never been in such a strange position before doesn't mean she wouldn't make it. But the silence stretches long enough that she almost asks him, impulsively, if he has a suitcase. But then he lays his hand on the wood paneling of the door, leaves it there for a few seconds, before it drops back down at his side again. He turns to her, face impassive but kind, the notebook still under one arm.

"Tea?" he says.

"Sorry?" she answers, a little taken aback. He must see it in her face, because he smiles then, and says, "There's an awful lot of stories I need to tell, apparently."

She smiles back, and nods. "Tea."

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Laughter echoes loudly in the console room. Donna is sitting in the control chair, clutching her sides, and gasping for breath. "Oh I bloody— can't— believe you!" she wheezes, tears already forming in the corners of her eyes. "You great big _lug_!"

"Oi!" he yells, offended, pointing to her for no real reason. She sobers for a moment before the corner of his lip twitches, and then they're both off again, howling with laughter that goes on forever. No room of the TARDIS is safe from their mirth, the sound of it filling the air like tolling bells, ringing through the corridors. It dies down, resurfaces, and then they lull back into silence. Donna sighs.

"Alright, what are we doing today then?" She thinks she might be ready to meet the Royal family. _Which_ Royal family is always up for debate, but she reckons she should sooner or later, right? Who knows, on some planet they might think she's a proper queen or something brilliant like that.

"Today, Donna," her companion says with glee, "we're doing spring cleaning!" His arms shoot into the air on either side of him, as if he has just performed a complicated magic trick for her entertainment. He must know _some_ kind of magic if he thinks he can saddle her with a dustbuster. She rolls her eyes at him.

"Okay but really, where are we going?"

"Spring cleaning—!" he says again, making his fingers go spastic like some bizarre version of jazz hands. His arms lower when all she gives him is a raised eyebrow. She crosses her legs (in a very ladylike, royal way, she imagines), and says, "That better be the name of a planet."

He looks like he's about to say something, lips beginning to shape themselves around a word, but then there's a twinkle in his eye, and this cannot be good news.

"Oh, no, don't tell me there really _is_ a planet of spring cleaning! I bet they all run around with mops singing in unison or something daft like that."

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, sidetracked for a moment. "Now where was I? Oh yes! Donna! I am going to make you a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"If we can empty my coat and put everything back where it belongs— everything —then you can fly us to the next planet. Or star system. Or, well— oh, you know what I mean. What do you say?"

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She looks dispassionately at all the random debris on either side of her. She thumbs through it, and picks up a yo-yo halfheartedly, examining the alien wood grain. Her eyes move over to where the Doctor is sitting, jacket-less and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, searching through a colorful pile of miscellanea that seems to have grown since the last time she looked over. She looks at the yo-yo again, and an idea dawns. She chucks it at his head.

He bends down to inspect something at the last second, and her eyes narrow. The yo-yo, meanwhile, crashes into a mini toaster oven. A nearby goldfish swimming contentedly in a plastic bag watches the commotion, and turns to Donna, blinking. "Oh, _weird_," she mutters to herself. She stares open-mouthed at the creature, wondering idly when the hell fish started blinking. It stares neatly back at her and shakes its head before continuing its laps inside the bag. Donna shakes her own head. It had been _four hours_ already. It was hilarious in the beginning— guessing what different objects did, teasing him about his Time Lord science, reminiscing about recent travels and laughing, all while sorting through the various chaos that poured from his pockets. But now, Royal visits or not, she needed a cup of tea. And though he was a right pain tricking her into this, she was sure he'd want some too.

She clears her throat a little to catch his attention. He doesn't seem to hear her— he's marveling at some object in his hands, too small to see from where she is. He looks happy and sad all at the same time. She stands carefully, picking her way through piles, trying not to step on anything and making her way over to him. He doesn't say anything about her approach; he doesn't even turn to her when she towers behind him, trying to see what he's looking at.

"Find something interesting?" she says quietly. He shrugs somberly.

"That's one word for it, I guess." He twirls something round between his fingers, and at first she thinks it's a coin, but then the light hits it in such a way that she can see what it really is. What it really means. He says nothing, continuing his examination for a few minutes before sighing. She moves to sit across of him, pushing away a book of Shakespeare, and a disordered notebook with a bent spiral binding. He lays the ring flat in the palm of his hand and looks down on it.

"Rose?"

He only nods. She tries to pull something clever from the air around her, something to tell him that can help find a place for it, but she feels adrift. Words, unspoken, ring in the corners of the console room, and crowd behind her teeth; waiting for the dam to break. She can see the heavy dust of heartbreak settle on his shoulders, watches as they hunch slightly inwards, bearing the invisible weight of her loss. She feels, suddenly, like he is drowning somehow in way that she can't identify— he has not changed, exactly, but half of his face glows a brilliant sea-green from the time rotor, and she is desperately unsure of what to do.

"Doctor—"

"No, Donna, I'm fine, it's— I'm going to be fine." She reaches for him, softly taking his wrist in one hand, and pressing his fingers closed around the ring with the other. He looks at her, surprised, because she's holding his hand in both of hers, looking at him like she understands completely.

"It's just that I— sometimes I forget how much it actually—" he trails off. "But she's not coming back, Donna. She can't."

She stands, pulling him up with her. She lets go of his hand, uses her own to run through her hair. She pretends not to notice that he slips the ring into his trouser pocket.

"Alright then, space man," she says brightly. "I'm taking us to meet the Queen of England."

He looks like he's going to laugh. "The country or the planet?" he says.

He lets go of it at her bewildered look, but eventually lets the chuckles die out when he catches her face light up with a grin.

"England the _planet!_" she cries. "Woo, let's _go!_" She launches herself at the console, and the Doctor stands stock still for a moment in absolute terror before jumping up to stop whatever disastrous buttons she is about to press.

She is too busy with laughing, and he is too busy regaining control that neither of them see the monitor flicker with the face of a girl.


End file.
